Beloit College hosts Family Discovery Night

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Beloit College will host its fourth annual Family Discovery Night on Friday, Oct. 23. This event, free and open to the public, allows community members of all ages to learn more about science through hands-on activities at two locations on the Beloit College campus: the Logan Museum of Anthropology and the Center for the Sciences.

Family Discovery Night is hosted by Beloit College with primary sponsorship by Kerry. The Roy Chapman Andrews Society and Bon Appetit are also serving as sponsors. Scientists and volunteers from all four organizations will be on hand to teach families about the scientific world.

This year’s program will be one of the most ambitious yet with 13 new, interactive stations for children to visit. For two of the interactive exhibits, this means stepping back in time.

At the Chemistry in Ancient Art station, children will be able to use a very mild acid to etch designs into seashells and make paint from the types of materials that were available to the artists behind the original cave paintings.

Another station, Time Travel: Beloit in the Ordovician, will send children 400 million years back into the past. Back then, “Wisconsin was covered by a shallow sea and the ultimate predator was a tentacled, jet-propelled, submarine-shaped nautiloid,” says Stephen Ballou, a staffer in the college’s geology department. Children and visitors will be able to make paper models of  Ordovician sea marine life, including the official state fossil, the trilobite, Ballou says.

At the Logan Museum, children and visitors will be able to learn about the ways in which corn, beans and squash formed the basis of agriculture in ancient America. This will include making dolls from corn husks and learning about the ways in which indigenous Americans “genetically engineered” corn, beans, and squash plant strains, says Dan Bartlett, curator of exhibits and education at the Logan Museum.     

Finally, Paul Fleisher, the author of Brain Food: 100+ Games That Make Kids Thinkwill be appearing at the Wilson Theatre in Mayer Hall, on campus just south of the Center for the Sciences. Fleisher will present at 6:30 and 7:30 p.m.

Family Discovery Night takes place from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Families can start at either the Center for the Sciences at 706 Emerson St. or the Logan Museum at 615 Prospect St.